MANILA, Philippines – PLDT on Thursday, June 11, announced that the Asia Direct Cable Consortium (ADC), of which it is a member, is building a new submarine cable that would connect the Philippines, China (Guangdong Province), Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Japan’s NEC Corporation has been selected to cnstruct the 9,400-kilometer long cable, expected to be completed by the 4th quarter of 2022. The new cable will provide additional capacity and bandwidth for network traffic in the covered regions. 

The cable’s high capacity will allow it to “support increasingly bandwidth-intensive applications which are driven by technological advancements such as 5G, cloud services, the internet-of-things and artificial intelligence,” said PLDT. 

The cable adds to PLDT’s fiber cable network currently spanning 338,000 kilometers across the Philippines, and linking the country to specific destinations around the world. 

“The ADC will further improve PLDT‘s network resiliency by strengthening its data links to Asia and the rest of the world. This will help PLDT to address the expanding demand for more digital services for both enterprises and our individual customers,” said PLDT chief revenue officer and Smart president Al Panlilio. 

The cable will feature “multiple pairs of high capacity optical fibers and is designed to carry more than 140 Tbps of traffic, enabling high capacity transmission of data across the East and Southeast Asian regions.” 

The ADC is a global consortium comprised of communications and technology companies, including CAT, China Telecom, China Unicom, Singtel, SoftBank Corporation, Tata Communications, and Viettel. – Rappler.com